A Year in Romance
For the certified nostalgic, eldest daughter, and secret lover girl.
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Every year, I like to close things out with some recap—usually in the form of a studio report—a summary of milestones and the work that defined my year. But this year, there was simply no studio. Aside from a couple of freelance projects, this year was a more personal one—slower yet still riddled with the same amount of anxiety.
Honestly, I wasn’t even going to acknowledge the new year. I was planning on carrying on with my schedule as one would in the middle of June. I kept asking myself, what’s there to say? There weren’t any big projects or financial milestones to highlight. Instead, there were quiet mornings (working for a company in Mountain Standard Time is a major life hack), new hobbies, and a worrying amount of spiraling. But as the end of the year got closer, I thought, why not recap 2024 through the one thing I stayed consistent with: romance books.
This year, I read 52 of them. It wasn’t a goal I wrote down or made known—it just kind of happened. Before this, I was lucky if I finished one or two books a year, and even then, they were usually nonfiction. For the four years I was running my studio full-time, it felt like I didn’t have the time to indulge in “silly” things. With that chapter behind me, I found my way back to the comfort I found in reading when I was 16.
I guess this is a good time to mention: if you’re expecting this recap to feature literary masterpieces, this might not be the article for you. This year, the only thing I could handle was the predictability of a fluffy romance story, and honestly, as guilty and “not cool enough” as that might make me feel, it was exactly what I needed. So, while I may not have a list of the most obscure “thought daughter” reads to add to your TBR or founder accomplishments to recap, I do have a year told in stories outside of my own. And, hopefully, that feels as refreshing for you as it does for me.
January
My first picks of the year were sports romances (thanks, TikTok). Looking back, I’m not sure what possessed me to pick up Ice Breaker by Hannah Grace as my first read of the year. It gave me major whiplash and was definitely not the smoothest reentry into the world of reading. Regardless, it was just intriguing enough to keep me going.
These books were forgettable—so much so that I cannot even remember why I rated them the way I did—but they did open a new world for me. For example, I now enjoy watching hockey and keeping up with our local team, whose existence I was unaware of prior to reading these books.
February
By February, I thought it was time to expand my plots a bit, and despite my initial reluctance, I picked up Beach Read by Emily Henry. Long story short: no Emily Henry slander will be tolerated here. 52 books in, I am confident no one writes contemporary romance like Emily Henry. Book Lovers feels like it was specifically written for eldest daughters. Last week, I watched a Jack Edwards YouTube video where he mentioned always keeping one Emily Henry book in his TBR so he could experience one for the first time if he ever needed an Emily Henry fix—not doing the same might be my only regret so far.
However, the book that dragged me through the dirt this month was A Love Letter to Whiskey by Kandi Steiner. I haven’t even dared to unpack my thoughts on it yet because, honestly, where do you even begin with something that emotionally jarring? I’m scared (for myself).
March
March marked the beginning of my Elle Kennedy era. These books were repetitive, predictable, and sometimes downright frustrating but also strangely comforting. Once you’re one book in, you’re dragged into this world, and I couldn’t seem to let go of it. That said, I probably should’ve because this was the beginning of the end of my hockey romance binge.
However, Ashley Poston’s The Seven Year Slip was the highlight of my month (and year). I’m genuinely scared to read another Ashley Poston book because I fear that it won’t live up to this one. This story unexpectedly reminded me of The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo—the kind of book that pulls you in so deeply that you’re almost convinced the characters exist in the real world. By the time I finished, I was so attached I hoped to run into them someday. More than anything, this book left me reflecting on how time, while precarious, can also be forgiving.
April
Enter: the end of my hockey romance binge. I pushed through The Dare to get to The Graham Effect, the first book in Elle Kennedy’s new Campus Diaries series. This one tells the story of Gigi, Hannah and Garret’s daughter from The Deal, the first book in the Off-Campus series. It was good enough and gave me the closure to finally move on.
A second book in the series has since been published, but I cannot bring myself to read about another hockey player falling in love. It was quite an odd three-month affair. To the Orlando Solar Bears: I still love you, even though you keep losing to the Jacksonville Icemen.
May
I didn’t pick up a single book this month. I was 1) prepping for my second move in less than two years and 2) using all of my free time—which was not much—to work on getting Cakehaus ready for our first market. On top of that, my brother graduated high school, and I dedicated an entire week to celebrating him.
Sometimes, life feels just as full as the books. May was that kind of month and I let myself fully enjoy it.
June
In June, I was itching to pick up a book again. Much of my reading this year felt like “catching up” on all the books everyone else had already read, which led me to Abby Jimenez. Part of Your World didn’t stand out to me—though I would still recommend reading it—but Yours Truly felt like a cry for help from inside the house.
Jacob’s awkward interactions with Briana at the beginning of the book were almost too familiar. The other day, I tried flirting with a guy at the farmers market by buying honey. Was it actually flirting? I don’t know. We talked about the weather, and I bought a gallon of his favorite honey. It felt like my real-life version of Yours Truly—a little embarrassing, unintentionally funny, but like, hopefully cute?
July
July was so good to me. After finishing Yours Truly, I was a little worried Just For The Summer wouldn’t hit quite the same, but to my surprise, it did. I’m not usually a fan of fake dating tropes, but this one had a more interesting setup that made it work. Sure, it all felt a bit too convenient at times, but it is a romance book, after all, isn’t it?
At this point, I was on a roll, and the bar was officially set high. It felt like the only book that could live up to the task was Emily Henry’s newest release, Funny Story. And while it wasn’t my favorite of hers, it did live up to my expectations for an Emily Henry book.
August
For some reason, shows and movies tend to become my preferred entertainment during the summer. After reading People We Meet On Vacation and realizing I only had one Emily Henry book left to read, I shifted gears and watched the Red, White, and Royal Blue film adaptation. Afterward, I decided to pick up the book because I felt like something was missing.
I felt like both the book and the movie were okay—the story could’ve gone so much deeper but stayed mostly surface-level. I was hoping the book would fill some of those gaps for me, but it still left me with the sense that it was a missed opportunity for something more.
September
In September, I came across Elsie Silver—specifically her newest series, Rose Hill. Honestly, I picked up Wild Love mainly because the cover stood out to me among the sea of illustrated ones (sorry—I’m a designer first, after all!). But once I started, I knew I’d found a new affair and immediately started reading Wild Eyes. One plot that will get me every single time is small-town romance. It’s me, after all, who has watched every single season of Virgin River and even Googled the town it’s based on so I can visit someday (and likely be disappointed).
It was also this month that Emily Henry announced her next book's title and release date, which meant I was finally safe to read Happy Place. As a certified nostalgic girl, I’m so, so glad I saved this one for last. It felt like the story of something I almost had but let go of at some point. It made me miss it, but also not. Mostly, it made me reflect on how things change—how we change—and all the choices between holding on and letting go.
October
Well, I didn’t realize how fitting this would be, but for October, I decided to try my hand at fantasy with Holly Black’s The Folk of the Air series. The romance was a subplot at best, and I found myself grasping at anything I could while constantly flipping back to the map every two paragraphs to fully immerse myself in this world. But once I got into it, I was surrounded by it and started to understand the allure of the fantasy genre. I’m pretty sure I read the last two books in two days. It was all worth it because, as promised by the reviews begging me to stick with it, The Queen of Nothing was the best of them all.
And then, I came back to Elsie Silver. Wildly unprepared, I should say.
November
Like I said before, small-town romance will get me every single time. But I was not expecting to get as completely sucked into this world as I did—six books, all by the same author. With the time I spend daydreaming about starting a farm, I should’ve known the cowboys would get to me.
Horses, bulls, and cows became my entire personality for this month. It didn’t help I had staring contests with my neighbor’s cows almost every day. Beyond the romance, these books spoke to the part of me who hopes to live in a farmhouse with an absurd acreage and a clear view of the mountains someday. And, if you read past all of the smut (which was described as mild by many but shocked me either way), these stories were about love beyond a romantic partner. They were about a sense of belonging—love for a place, a community, and a way of life.
December
By December, I was trying to hold on to the cowboy world by any means. It started strong but quickly fizzled out, leaving me to wait for Elsie Silver’s next release in the Rose Hill series. I’m not quite ready to part ways with small-town romance yet.
Honestly, I had such a hard time picking my next book because I didn’t want to be disappointed. But I was disappointed anyway after reading The Pumpkin Spice Cafe. I had bought the book without reading too much into it earlier in the fall, expecting it to be a cozy, good-enough read. Spoiler: It wasn’t. I hated every minute of it, and I hated my inability to DNF a book even more.
I’m still reading It Happened One Summer, so maybe this whole issue was clickbait (forgive me?), but it almost felt like I couldn’t finish it without acknowledging what it meant to me to get to this point. I picked this one up from my long “playing catch up” list, and at a little over halfway through, I’d give it a solid three stars. I could, however, go the rest of my life without seeing the phrase “recharging station” used to describe a hug, so we’ll see how it plays out. I would’ve loved to have ended the year with a bang, but that’s mostly on me anyway.
If this year has taught me anything, it’s that not everything has to be profound or ambitious. God forbid we do something for pure enjoyment. So, I’m closing the year with a list of little wins I wouldn’t have given the time of day to before:
Read the most fiction books I’ve finished since I was 16
Decreased my screen time—it was time I took a break from short-form content
I used something I bought to its full capacity (my Kindle <3)
Expanded my vocabulary
Learned to properly unwind after work—a luxury I’d lost
All of this was a reminder of what it feels like to do things just for yourself—that not only the flashy achievements are worth celebrating. There’s so much to learn from the unassuming moments in life, even when the “moment” in question covers the span of an entire year. But maybe that’s the point.
It brought to mind a letter I came across on Pinterest from Cheryl Strayed’s Tiny Beautiful Things:
"Don’t lament so much about how your career is going to turn out. You don’t have a career. You have a life. Keep the faith. Do the work. The useless days will add up to something. The shitty waitressing jobs. The writing in your journal. The long meandering walks. The hours reading poetry and novels and dead people’s diaries and wondering about sex and God and whether you should shave under your arms or not. These things are your becoming."
Here’s to another year of reading—hopefully more than romance this time around.
With love from the house,
Wilda xx
Readers, how do you rank your books? I’m so stingy with 5 stars that I realize my ratings might be all over the place. I tried to make a bit more sense of it below:
★ Terrible—might as well have DNF’ed
★★ Readable, but waiting for you to be great
★★★ Consider me entertained
★★★★ Good enough, might even be great
★★★★★ Hooked, forever changed, will read again eventually
I've also read 52 books this year, and I'm trying to squeeze in one or two more before the new year. I would love it if you wrote about the changes in your schedule between working for yourself and someone else and the impact they have had on you. Happy New Year!